


the wind in our sail (what we've waited for)

by luninosity



Category: Actor RPF, Captain America (Movies) RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Captivity, Escape, First Meetings, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Smut, Hand Jobs, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magic, Porn with Feelings, Protective Chris, Sexual Content, Were-Creatures, Were-Kitten Sebastian, White Witch Chris, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-10 13:15:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6957940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sebastian, water getting in his eyes, curses his life and his poor decision-making skills. Not for the first time. Not for the last, either, probably.</p><p>“Oh, shh, hold still, baby,” Chris Evans admonishes, and continues trying to get mud off of his paws.</p><p>Or: the were-kitten!Sebastian and white witch!Chris story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the wind in our sail (what we've waited for)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ViperSeven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViperSeven/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文 available: [the wind in our sail (what we've waited for) |待风启航](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8156756) by [VanessaCCC](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VanessaCCC/pseuds/VanessaCCC)
  * Translation into Русский available: [the wind in our sail (what we've waited for)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10236851) by [merchant_prince](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merchant_prince/pseuds/merchant_prince)



> For Viper, who is a fabulous Muse. *hearts*
> 
> Title courtesy of Weezer's "Wind In Our Sail," this time. I really like this album.
> 
>  **Minor Warnings for:** Sebastian having been previously captured, before escaping - which is how he runs into Chris, where we start this story - by a far less nice warlock, who used compulsion spells on him for both magic and sex. As Seb tells Chris, the guy was actually decent in bed and wanted Seb to enjoy himself too and Seb didn't get hurt at all, physically, but the situation overall was clearly nonconsensual and Not Good.

Sebastian, water getting in his eyes, curses his life and his poor decision-making skills. Not for the first time. Not for the last, either, probably.  
  
“Oh, shh, hold still, baby,” Chris Evans admonishes, and continues trying to get mud off of his paws. “Such a sweet little guy, aren’t you…”  
  
Sebastian’s exceedingly tempted to hiss. He refrains. He’s currently stuck in kitten-shape and hiding from a cranky warlock, being bathed by a white witch and graphomancer who’s rescued him from pounding rain and sticky city dirt, and possessing pretty much no usable magic of his own. Annoying yet another witch is low on his list of good choices, which is a very short list, because Sebastian’s historically not spectacular at good choices.  
  
“Almost done,” Chris reassures him, scooping him out of the sink, bundling him into a hot towel. Sebastian’s too tired—and too wet—to protest. Anyway, the heat and softness feel practically orgasmic. He leans into Chris’s gentle rubbing and purrs.  
  
Chris Evans says, sounding unreasonably pleased by this, “Aww, you’re so affectionate, such a sweetheart…you like attention, don’t you?”  
  
Yes. He always has. Shamelessly so. Which is part of why he’s in this mess. But Chris has such lovely hands, artist’s hands, magician’s hands, big and strong and gentle…excellent for petting, oh yes…  
  
“Wonder if you have an owner,” Chris muses, toweling his back. “Someone might be missing you.”  
  
This comment snaps him _right_ out of the contented daze. He feels his tail fluff. His spine stiffens. He tries not to bite Chris’s finger. Reflex.  
  
“Okay, okay, sorry.” Chris holds up hands, laughing. “I swear it’s like you know what I’m saying. Anyway you don’t have a collar or anything. And you were a total mudball, not like anyone was takin’ care of you.”  
  
_You_ try staying dry and fluffy while running from a warlock in a temper-tantrum thunderstorm, Sebastian wants to snap; but settles for turning himself into an offended cat-loaf on Chris’s towel, atop the kitchen counter.  
  
He knows who Chris Evans is. Most of the North American witches, sorcerers, and this-side-of-dark warlocks get together a couple times a year, ostensibly to catch up and show off new magical insights, mostly to one-up each other in terms of spells, albeit in a friendly-competitive way. Sebastian’s met Chris Evans twice, not that Chris’ll remember. Chris works as a very definitely white witch and magical artist; as a graphomancer, his talent lies in his hands, his ink. At the last coven gathering Sebastian’d seen him sketch flowers into blooming roseate life; Chris does a lot of work with kids, with families, with dream-soothing and therapeutic healing.   
  
Chris isn’t the most powerful or the most flashy. Just kind. Good-hearted.  
  
The sort of man who’ll pick up a stray shivering kitten, fur damp with unseasonal thunderstorm cold, and carry it carefully home.  
  
Chris might’ve seen him at that last gathering. Chris won’t recognize him.  
  
Chris wouldn’t recognize him even if he were human. Sebastian’s not special.   
  
In fact this is untrue. Proper therianthropes are rare, and people keep an eye out. A lot of witches can transform themselves for short periods, but those, as Sebastian’s mother likes to say, are faking it.   
  
Not for the first time since running, he’s grateful he’s an unremarkable brown tabby. Fluffy and long-legged, yes, with folded-over ears and big blue-grey eyes which might be less usual and definitely hint at magic, but at a fleeting glance he looks like any one of a hundred feral cats roaming city streets.  
  
He sighs. A cat-sigh.  
  
“Hey,” Chris says, worried all over again, “you’re not getting sick, are you?” and collects him into large strong arms, cradling him against a chest which is also large and strong. “Sitting on my counter’s probably not the best place for you. Hey, are you hungry, I’ve got…um…oh, I’ve got half a leftover sandwich? Pastrami? Do cats eat pastrami? I wasn’t expecting company.”  
  
Sebastian dives into the sandwich. He’s not starving; his warlock hadn’t wanted him wasting away. But oh _fuck_ Chris Evans has good taste in sandwich shops.   
  
He gets pastrami on his nose. He doesn’t care.  
  
“You might want to slow down,” Chris suggests, “or I’ll have to bathe you again.”  
  
Sebastian stops eating. Gives him a dirty look. Thunder snickers at them, outside.  
  
“I’ll buy you kibble or something in the morning.” Chris picks him up again and puts him on the couch. It’s a nice couch. Squashable, sturdy, meant for sitting on and lazing around on, being used, being friendly. Chris’s whole house radiates friendliness, from the purposeful herb-garden in the kitchen to the well-loved books on space and astrology and magical botany and the history of art that decorate wood-plank shelves. Ink-pots with neat labels line an open chest near a tall window, along with paper and parchment on a table; Chris Evans works through art and magic-infused creation, rescuing the world one sketch at a time.  
  
Chris also apparently thinks he eats kibble. Sebastian stretches out a paw and sticks claws into the nearest impressively muscular thigh, though politely, because the kind witch is taking care of him.  
  
“Ow, hey, don’t do that.”  
  
Sebastian gives him an innocent _who, me?_ look. Chris asks, “Are all cats such assholes? I was always more of a dog person, y’know. Also I like these jeans, no holes, please.”  
  
Sebastian can’t actually fix any holes he puts in Chris’s clothing. He now feels a bit bad. He retracts the claws. Hops up on Chris’s lap. Bumps his head into Chris’s hand. Purrs. An apology.  
  
He can’t fix Chris’s jeans because he can’t do magic. Technically he _is_ magic; he’s a power-source, a born shapeshifter, an inspiration for medieval legends and modern experimental witches alike. Not him _personally_ , of course; therianthropes of any species, like most magical creatures, have a normal human-sized lifespan, though they do tend to be more resistant to common illnesses and minor annoyances, and he’s got a faster-than-human-standard-though-not-immediate healing factor. Comes with being able to flow between shapes, or so say the academics and theoretical magicians.  
  
Sebastian can’t do magic the way humans can, can’t grab and tug at strings of power, because he doesn’t see power the same way; he already exists in a swirl of magic, laced through his being, and looking for lines to pull or rivers to channel would be like separating out strands of his soul. He can divert those rivers sometimes, can change into cat-shape when he wants to, can make his own reservoirs available to—or shielded from—anyone he chooses. But he doesn’t have the right eyes or hands to use that shimmering brightness the way Chris could.  
  
The way another warlock could.  
  
The way a horribly unscrupulous warlock could. Someone who wanted to siphon power from a magical resource, a pool of strength waiting to be tapped.  
  
Chris has started automatically scratching behind his ears, hand generous and amused, but pauses. Sebastian realizes he’s stopped purring.  
  
He turns his head. He can’t look at Chris. He doesn’t know how he feels.  
  
Stupid, yes: that’s certainly in there. Tired. Self-conscious. Scared for both no reason and a very good reason: he knows exactly how he got into trouble this time and he believes Chris won’t hurt him, but he’s just escaped eight months of being collared, and unscrupulous warlocks’re absolutely on his mind.  
  
Chris at the moment remains under the impression that he’s merely a cat, which is temporarily good. A small part of Sebastian’s head suggests nastily that Chris can’t be _that_ skilled a witch if he’s not picking up the whole magical aura, but then again Chris is a genuinely nice guy, based on currently available evidence. Chris quite possibly doesn’t want to pry into even a cat’s privacy and so hasn’t even looked, and therefore Sebastian’s head is being mean and cranky and looking for flaws, which isn’t really fair.  
  
He’s staying a cat because that’s safer. If he shifts back now, Chris will know exactly what he is. Depending on Chris’s shields, so will any number of magical practitioners within some radius of this house.   
  
Shields. He should check that. He tilts his head, whiskers forward, extending senses. He _is_ good at feeling magic, presence prickling in his bones. And Chris Evans…  
  
Chris Evans has _excellent_ shields. This house sits wrapped up in layer upon layer of skillful self-supporting protections: swirls of silvery opalescent defense from physical thieves and intruders, night-blue blossoms of magical warding, interestingly complex lavender-meadowsweet sparkles of emotional armor—oh, _fascinating_ , Chris keeps up wards that hold anxiety and depression and rationality-shattering panic at bay. Primrose and sunset-gold billow optimistically through the other colors. The scents of waterfalls and green leaves lace calm into the recipe like sweetness through a ginger cake. The warding’s partly for customers—Chris does a lot of work with kids and families in need of healing, Sebastian recalls—and partly clearly written for Chris himself, who worries to the point of distress about fulfilling other people’s needs.  
  
He now has a whole host of other emotions. He turns back around—Chris has tactfully not resumed petting him, letting him do what he wants, checking email on a slightly older but decently expensive cellphone—and walks right up and puts paws on Chris’s chest and makes a plaintive kitten-chirp in Chris’s face: _I’m sorry_.  
  
Chris laughs, sets the phone down—a small crease between eyes, but a smile—and ruffles his fur. “Fuck, you’re cute. Kinda unpredictable, but cute. Might win me over.”  
  
Unpredictable. Well, it’s not a wrong word. Sebastian contemplates his life up to this point: his paws on Chris Evans’ chest, Chris Evans scratching his chin.   
  
He’s used to being wanted. He’s used to parties and late nights and being desired; he’s not unattractive in human form, long legs and pretty eyes and soft hair and a mouth that other people seem to appreciate; he’s good for sex with anyone and everyone and sometimes multiple anyones at once; he’s perfectly aware that more than half the time sorcerers and theoreticians and witches want to take him home and borrow his power to make spells more effective, a dip in his pool, a shining handful of amplified enchantment in exchange for making him feel loved and cherished for a night, a few hours, a caress of minutes.  
  
He’s never been good at being alone. He likes pleasing people. He honestly does. That feels good, a sort of bashful glowing ember inside.  
  
He’s extremely conscious of the fact that the people don’t generally want _him_. They want the power. The sex, which he’s _spectacular_ at and quite likes having, thank you. The reputation: not too many up-and-coming witches can say they’ve had a wild night with a real-life meet-one-or-two-in-a-lifetime shapeshifter.   
  
He considers this last point. Concedes that, given his predilections, a few more witches and warlocks can say so these days.  
  
Which is why he’s here. On Chris’s lap. In Chris’s house.  
  
He’s going to get Chris in trouble. He’s not good for Chris. He’s not evil or malicious, but he’s almost certainly not a good person, not the way Chris Evans is. Chris deserves better.  
  
Unfortunately, the sky’s hammering down rain and thunder and lightning like it’ll never have another chance. Sebastian possesses at the moment exactly no human clothes, wallet, cellphone, or money. And has that pesky angry warlock who’s recently discovered an absence of kitten.   
  
And he feels preemptively guilty about fucking up Chris’s life. Chris’s brightly-warded carefully-woven bighearted generous life. Chris’s life, which is about to get vastly more complicated, because Sebastian either runs again and leaves Chris wondering forlornly where his new kitten’s gone, or reveals himself and opens up an entire soap-opera’s worth of sex, captivity, a magical enemy, and temptations of power.  
  
“How’d you know,” Chris asks softly, hand unerringly finding the exact right spot at the base of his tail, “that I didn’t want to be alone tonight, kitty? Nothin’ awful, just a long day, so many clients needing to feel hope, y’know? And I can do a lot, but I can’t fix everything. That’s hard sometimes, when it’s kids, when they—”  
  
Sebastian purrs more. Rolls over on Chris’s lap. Offers his tummy for petting. He hates that melancholy note in Chris’s voice all of a sudden. He doesn’t even know Chris, but he doesn’t like the idea of Chris being sad.  
  
Chris gives children art infused with good dreams. Chris helps find lost pets and makes tiny animations that come alive and race around to bring smiles to careworn faces. Chris rescues rain-soaked frightened kittens and brings them home and offers his own pastrami. Chris Evans should forever be protected and happy and given kitten-fluff to pet, Sebastian decides on the spot.  
  
Chris smiles, and the smile’s echoed in his voice, in his eyes, as he tests a tummy-rub, gets a playful swat—no claws—from a paw, and laughs and tries again, which Sebastian permits this time. “You’re teasing me, aren’t you? Brat. —so, yeah, long day, and then there you were, all wet and sad and trying to stay dry under my car, and I just…if I can take care of you, that’s somethin’ I can do. Just one thing. Makin’ life better for somebody.”  
  
Brat, Sebastian thinks; and pounces lightly on Chris’s hand, kicking: a perfect target, as it rests on his stomach. No claws and no real biting, only nibbling; and then he stretches upside-down and gazes up sweetly and tucks his paws up invitingly.  
  
“Ha,” Chris says. “Not falling for that again. Do I need cat toys? Oh, fuck, do I need a—a litterbox? Or…I don’t even know how old you are, do you need—okay, you eat solid food, you ate my sandwich, but—shit, should I take you to a vet or something?”  
  
Sebastian smacks his hand with one paw. Scowls.   
  
And now has yet another problem, because obviously he doesn’t want Chris to take him to a vet, first because any semi-competent vet will have worked with magical familiars and will notice _something_ extraordinary, and second because _fuck_ no.  
  
Chris stops talking, laughs. Thunder splits the evening sky, booming along. “I guess that means I’m keeping you?”  
  
Sebastian’s brain instantly goes to a few very filthy places. Incredibly filthy. Being kept by Chris. Being Chris’s pet. Being kept naked as Chris’s pet.  
  
He does like sex. And he’s pretty sure he likes Chris Evans.  
  
But Chris Evans isn’t going to like him.  
  
The second he thinks this, exhaustion crashes down over him in a smothering wave of sadness. He doesn’t know what the fuck he wants. When he thinks about going back to his old lifestyle, he only feels icicle-weary, drawn thin and brittle: over the whole party scene, over being someone’s magical toy, _completely_ over being trapped in a bespelled collar for eight months as a result of his own unfortunate taste in men and fruit-flavored vodka and mildly euphoric enchanted enhancements. He’s not being judgmental—he’d had fun being wanted, and he has friends who still have fun, probably, assuming he still has friends—but he’s personally fucking done.  
  
The question is: what does he do now?  
  
The question is: is there _anything_ he wants?  
  
“I need a name for you, then,” Chris muses. “Oliver? You know, like Disney? _Oliver and Company_? Except you’re not orange. Oliver should be orange. Somethin’ from _The Aristocats_? O’Malley, Berlioz, Toulouse?”  
  
Sebastian, who doesn’t entirely object to being named after a Disneyfied artist or composer but already _has_ a name, looks up. Chris Evans is grinning, small and fond, happy to pet a fluffy kitten tummy, still with that tiny line between eyebrows, maybe a headache from the day.  
  
Sebastian Stan wants Chris Evans to feel good.  
  
He flicks his tail. Sits up more. Looks into Chris’s eyes, pale blue-grey meeting deeper ocean-hue. He’s out of practice at doing this willingly, but he’s been a power-source for a warlock disgustingly recently; he should be able to extend magic along those channels. He can’t manipulate those lines of power but he can nudge his own, the way a lake’s boundaries change over time, and he can shield and heal instinctively; he’s shared himself on purpose before…Chris glows like a hearthfire, open and beckoning and empathetic, which should make this easy…a hearthfire with a dark unhappy throb at the base of his skull, but that’s tiny really, not a challenge…  
  
Chris blinks. Reaches up to rub the back of his head. “Huh.”  
  
Sebastian curls his tail around his feet. Puts his head on one side. Purrs. Smugly.  
  
“I didn’t do that,” Chris realizes. “I mean, I barely even noticed it hurt. But if I didn’t…and no one else is here, not even my brother…you’re not, like, someone’s familiar, are you? But then I seriously need to give you back; that’s someone else’s magic…”  
  
_That’s_ not the desired result. Sebastian vaults fluidly off Chris’s lap. Darts under the coffee-table. Peeks out from behind one leg just to make sure Chris is okay.  
  
“But that’s weird.” Chris rubs his head again, making his hair stand up. Short and dark and neat, like his beard: masculine and mature and simultaneously youthful and energetic. “If you belonged to someone, they totally weren’t taking care of you, you were out in the rain and hungry…you’re not tagged or collared or anything, you act like you know exactly what I’m saying, and that magic…”  
  
Sebastian grimaces. Right. Damn.  
  
“…that didn’t feel like anything I know.” Chris gets down on the floor. Peers at him from eye level, lying unselfconsciously prone over wood and rug, but doesn’t try to get him out. “Nobody’s power signature that I recognize, and it didn’t even feel…it felt more like…innate magic, natural magic, but that’s not…or I’m just really fucking tired and I’m confusing myself and I should go to bed. I mean, come on, what’re the odds of someone like that turning up under my car, seriously.”  
  
Better than you think, Sebastian retorts mentally. You feel like the world’s best safe-haven sanctuary and you have nice hands.  
  
“I’m…just going to make a phone call real quick,” Chris says slowly, getting up, “and then, um, maybe go shopping? Because this’s probably all in my head, it’s ridiculous, you’re a cat, and so you’re gonna need some sort of food and litterbox and whatever for tonight, and—but you stay there for a sec, okay, while I check on something? And why am I talking to you like you’re going to answer? I don’t even know. Okay, hang on.”  
  
He’s not certain who Chris is calling, but it doesn’t matter. Choices: down to pretty much one.  
  
Chris says, “Hey, Scott? I know you know more coven gossip than I do, yeah I admitted that, _yes_ I know you’re never gonna let me forget saying you know more about _anything_ , but shut up about it for now, listen, have you heard about anyone missing a—” and proceeds to wander around the living room, out to the kitchen, around the sofa: Chris Evans paces when he talks, Sebastian observes. In motion. Like the rain: constantly pouring, chattering, drenching the world in cool silken patter.  
  
Chris meanders back to the kitchen again. Sebastian gathers kitten-legs, and bolts. Soundless. Down the hall to the open door which leads to—he’s guessing but he’s right—Chris’s bedroom.  
  
Chris’s bedroom’s a mess, in the way created by someone raised with good tidiness habits but single thirty-something male artist tendencies. Navy-plaid sheets dangle from a half-made bed; some socks and a pair of jeans haven’t made their way fully into the hamper; a stack of books has overflowed from the nightstand to the floor; but on the whole, not bad. Sebastian notices the authors. Tolle, Hawking, Kerouac. Neil deGrasse Tyson. Chris likes space exploration and philosophy and the outdoors. Something tugs at his heart, unfamiliar and fond.   
  
Trading shapes feels like the combination of a full-body sneeze and the exhilaration of an intense brief workout and the release right after a good orgasm: he’s never been able to properly describe it. A ripple and a switch and a snap into another shape that feels _right_ , and a quick shudder of pleasure as sensations ebb and spill and rush in. He moans in ecstasy, but only quietly. He’s in a hurry. He’s decidedly naked.  
  
Chris is an inch or so taller and a tiny bit broader in the shoulders but not much. Sebastian grabs a soft-looking long-sleeved blue shirt—sensation does matter; he’s disconcertingly sensitive _everywhere_ for about an hour after shapeshifting either direction—and manages to discover clean boxer-briefs in the top drawer, but apparently Chris owns no clean pants or keeps them somewhere else, and he’s not going to rummage through _all_ of Chris’s clothes, and he’s running out of time.  
  
Fuck it. He can seduce Chris if he needs to. Then he can stay here, at least for tonight, safe behind these intricately built artistic wards.  
  
He throws on the shirt, nearly trips himself pulling on boxer-briefs—heather-grey and simple, bought by someone who likes comfort and a lack of bulky fabric but isn’t dressing to show off, and Sebastian briefly misses his one-time collection of decadent scarlet and sapphire and ivory scraps—and rumples up his hair and checks himself in the tall freestanding mirror.  
  
Long bare legs, bare feet, shirt with marginally too-long sleeves over underwear, big eyes, slightly cold. Harmless. Not any kind of threat. Hopefully appealing to Chris’s kindness. Maybe appealing to Chris’s interest, assuming Chris likes guys. Sebastian’s been known to coax a few supposedly straight warlocks and witches across that line, too.  
  
He runs out of Chris’s bedroom and down the hall right as Chris bends back up from quizzically peering under the coffee table.  
  
Chris turns.  
  
Lightning flashes dramatically outside.  
  
Sebastian strikes a nonchalant kitten-pose, leaning against the wall, framed by Chris’s hallway, playing up coltish legs and sweetness. “Hi,” he says. “For the record, _not_ Oliver. Berlioz might work. I like musicians. But it’s Sebastian, actually, so, yes, hi.”  
  
“Um,” Chris says into the speaker, “Scott, I’m gonna…call you back…” and drops his phone, thankfully on the couch and not the floorboards.   
  
“I’m sorry I ate all your pastrami,” Sebastian offers helpfully.  
  
“What the fuck,” Chris says.  
  
“And I borrowed your clothes. I don’t have any. And I’m a little cold.”  
  
Chris stares at him. Makes an absentminded gesture. The room gets warmer.   
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“No problem…that _was_ you. Fixing my headache.”  
  
“Yes. I thought—you were so kind and I—” He fumbles, slips over words, finds himself at a loss. He’s better than this, he’s _good_ at being precocious and charming, dammit. Somehow he can’t be anything other than honest. “I wanted to help.”  
  
“You’re a…you actually _are_ a…you’re not just a…”  
  
“Not an enchanted familiar, or a witch who fucked up a temporary borrowing spell and got stuck? No and no.”  
  
“Wait.” Chris has carried on staring at him. “I _know_ you.”  
  
“No you don’t.” As much as he wants that, and doesn’t want that: twin arrows of mortification and excitement thump goldenly into his heart. “You wouldn’t.” He hasn’t slept with Chris Evans, has he? No. No, he’d remember. He’s ninety-nine percent confident about this.  
  
“I totally fuckin’ do. I mean, we never formally met. But you were at the last…no, not the last coven gathering, the one before that…you’re Sebastian Stan.” Chris is blushing furiously. “You, um…you were a little bit, okay, a lot drunk and kinda…preoccupied with the warlock twins…and their hands…I knew you were one of the only natural therianthropes around, of course, and I’d heard…”  
  
“Whatever you heard was likely true. By the way, I was at the last gathering too. You just didn’t recognize me.”  
  
“Cat-form,” Chris says, catching up. “Right. But…what happened? There were rumors, there’re always rumors, and people said they’d seen you, but no one ever knew for sure…some people thought you just got tired of everyone using you and said fuck it and quit going out, and some people said you ran off with a billionaire Italian sorcerer, and some people even said you’d let someone use you up, bleed you dry, and you were dead, and I thought, no, that couldn’t be right…”  
  
“I rather like the billionaire Italian sorcerer one. Which one did you like?” He doesn’t know why he wants to know so badly. But he does.  
  
Standing in Chris Evans’ living room, they gaze at each other. The moment extends, tremulous and newborn and poised amid all sorts of possibilities.  
  
Sebastian shivers. Again. Because his legs’re naked and his skin’s prickling from the storm and even the softness of Chris’s shirt combined with the hardness of the wall is making his body wobble, processing through aftermath.  
  
“Oh, fuck,” Chris says, grabbing a blanket, running over. In motion again. Instinctive. Running to help. “Are you all right? Jesus, come here, sit down, I can—I don’t know anything about what you need—would, like, tea or something be—or food—or sugar, I might have orange juice—”  
  
“I’m fine, it’s only the reaction, everything’s sort of magnified for a while—”  
  
“—god, and I keep it cold in here.” Chris grabs a pen. Scribbles. The fireplace leaps to roaring life. Chris shakes out fingertips; sparks scatter. “Better?”  
  
“Was that regular ink? You used your own power? Not anything pre-infused?”  
  
“You’re cold!”  
  
“Well, yes, but I could’ve waited two minutes!”  
  
“Maybe I couldn’t!”  
  
They gaze at each other some more. Chris is wearing jeans and a vintage-style green-and-blue plaid shirt—he must like plaid and blue, Sebastian concludes—and looks like the definition of cuddly, which Sebastian knows for a fact to be true, having been on that lap earlier.  
  
Chris Evans is blushing more, being looked at.   
  
They sit on the sofa together under the clamor of ceaseless rain and start and stop sentences at the same time, awkward; Chris laughs and glances away, and Sebastian breathes out and tugs his blanket more closely around himself and says, “You first.”  
  
“What _did_ happen?” Chris asks, tone cautious as if comprehending potential minefields. “If you want.”  
  
“Short version, I got impressively drunk at a party, slept with the most wrong person in the history of ever, and woke up naked, sore, hungover, and wearing a warlock’s collar.” He waves a hand. Maybe they can move past this quickly. “So that’s my last eight months. How was yours?”  
  
“You were wearing a _collar_.” Trust Chris Evans to jump right past the preamble and to the spot that hurts the most, a dull throb of cold fright even now. “Compulsion, binding-spells—are you in danger? Are you hurt?”  
  
“Thoroughly embarrassed, but that’s not new.” He has to look down. At Chris’s rug, solid and fuzzy in chunky anemone-tendrils and made for batting at with cat-paws. Not at Chris’s face: too much compassion aimed squarely at him. “He didn’t…it could’ve been worse. I was a cat for most of it, he used me as a magic source, commanded me to be human when he wanted to fuck me, but he wasn’t terrible in bed. And he fed me decently well, and otherwise he mostly left me alone, except for the power-drain. I’m okay.”  
  
“Are you?”  
  
Sebastian opens his mouth to reply, to find words more sarcastic and flippant and glib—  
  
Chris watches him, concerned.  
  
“No,” he says, very small, “I—no. I don’t know,” and then he puts his face in his hands and breathes for a minute, not crying. Chris, after a heartbeat of indecisive hovering, picks up a second blanket from the back of the couch and holds it out. Sebastian takes it gratefully, curling up under galaxy-patterned knit. His hands feel icy.  
  
Captivity could’ve been worse, he knows. He’s heard those horror stories. And he hadn’t been lying; he hadn’t been hurt, physically speaking; he’d been fed and cared for; he hadn’t been abused as such. He’d even been allowed—with restrictions in place—to contact his mother.   
  
What he _had_ been—  
  
He’d been ordered around, bidden by the compulsions laced into that collar. The warlock’d mostly demanded that he pour his magic into more effective spells, and sometimes to make dinner because he’s a decent cook, and sometimes to be human again and stay naked and bend over, which hadn’t been the worst thing, because the man did like to see Sebastian enjoy it too, and Sebastian under other more consensual circumstances rather appreciates being dominated and commanded and pinned down.   
  
Nevertheless: captivity. Not unbearable, at times even pleasurable, but not his choice.  
  
To be fair, his conscience circles back to remind him, the disaster’d started with himself. Those aforementioned extremely poor decisions. Sometimes he also has the morals of a cat, at least as regards getting blissfully intoxicated, being petted by a lot of euphoria-inducing hands, and falling into strangers’ laps. In his defense, he doesn’t expect those strangers to turn out to be nasty power-hungry warlocks with expertise in binding magical creatures. That’s not _normal_.  
  
He’d spent a lot of the unoccupied moments of the past eight months in cat-form, by choice, sulking atop bookshelves and under chairs.  
  
“Want hot chocolate?” Chris says, when the silence stretches out to become unbearable.  
  
Sebastian says, because why the hell not, “Yes please.”  
  
And then, as Chris gets up, “I am still wondering. About all the guesses. Where I went. Which one did you believe?”  
  
Chris stops. Makes a face: a wry half-smile. “I don’t know.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“I didn’t know you. I didn’t want to make assumptions. I remembered thinking, when I saw you…you didn’t look happy. Even when you were being petted and fed moon-sugar by the warlock twins. You looked like you were gettin’ off on it, yeah, but…that’s not the same thing. And they had a ton of power that weekend, spells they shouldn’t’ve been able to handle, and we all knew that was you, but if it was consensual, then it wasn’t my business…” Chris nibbles at his lower lip, lets it go. “I wanted to think you ran off with an Italian sorcerer. I wanted to think that you wanted to go and he’d take care of you and make you smile.”  
  
“But you didn’t know.”  
  
“No.” Chris swallows. “I didn’t—my little brother’s had some rough, um, not that you ever did serious drugs or—but you kinda had that look. Sort of. Not like you were an addict, but—I can’t fuckin’ explain it. Not in good words. Like you could be petted and fucked and three sheets to the wind on dandelion wine all weekend, but you’d still be watching everybody, knowing they wanted your magic, thinking you were alone. I hoped you were okay. But I didn’t know.”  
  
Sebastian nods because he has to respond in some fashion. Inside he’s dizzy: unnerved by Chris’s insight, rattled by Chris’s ability to care for someone as yet unmet.   
  
“And you weren’t okay,” Chris sums up. “I should’ve looked for you.”  
  
He sits bolt upright under the blankets. Shoves up one of Chris’s too-long shirtsleeves. “What—why—I’m not your responsibility! You don’t even know me!”  
  
“You were my cat for like ten minutes,” Chris says. “I feel responsible. Parental, even.”  
  
Sebastian narrows eyes, realizes that this is teasing—half-teasing, anyway—and goes with, “I wasn’t your cat then, and weren’t you making us hot chocolate? Go. Feed me, witch.”  
  
Entertained eyebrows shoot up. “Oh, so that’s how this is? Are all shapeshifters this bossy?”  
  
“Yes. We’re rare and special and expect privileged treatment. No, actually, please don’t, you don’t have to.” He grabs Chris’s sleeve. Cat-like reflexes. “I’m only teasing you. You’ve already done so much, letting me stay here even this long. I can go, I swear, just give me a few minutes to get warm and level out.”  
  
“Where would you go?” Chris eyeballs the window. Rain lashes the pane with unbridled irritation. “And also. Um. I’m not ordering you to stay, I’m guessin’ you’ve had enough of that, but I’d like it if you did. I don’t like the thought of you going out in this. Level out?”  
  
“Oh, right. You wouldn’t know. The…” He wiggles fingers in the air, unsure exactly what he’s demonstrating. “The moments right after a change can be overwhelming. Like trying to process two sets of signals, sensory input, for a while. One set gets weaker and fades out, but basically everything’s on overload for, oh, maybe another twenty minutes.” Underestimating, but he’ll be up to running by then if he has to. “Stop looking at me like that. It’s not _not_ fun. Kind of, um…you know how after you sort of…have really incredible sex… _right_ after, so everything’s…extra-sensitive and tingly…”  
  
“Oh.” Chris’s eyes widen. “ _Oh_.”  
  
“Yes. That.”  
  
“So now I’m _really_ against you leaving.” With an expression Sebastian legitimately can’t decipher: concerned plus something more, but the something’s being shoved hard down under the surface. “Do you need anything? Can I help?”  
  
“No, I’m used to it, and you’ve been helping, the fire and the blankets—”  
  
“Hot chocolate!” Chris jumps in, interrupting. “Right, warm things, you could use—be right back—” and sprints to the kitchen.  
  
Sebastian, left alone with two blankets and a cheerful magically-lit fire, blinks at the abruptly empty spot on the couch. Cupboards open and close in the other room. Temporarily enhanced hearing picks up a muttered profanity or two. He stares at flames until his eyes water.  
  
Of course Chris is muttering profanity. Chris planned to rescue a kitten, and now has a runaway scandalous shapeshifter curled up under blankets on his sofa.   
  
Firelight casts shadows, leaping. His skin’s too hot and too cold, drowning in sensation. He wants to cry and he wants to sleep for a week and he wants to get fucked by someone he wants, someone he chooses, so that he can feel release, so that he can feel relief, so that he can feel real.  
  
He looks at the window. Firegleam reflects through rain. He hugs Chris’s blanket, the one knitted in a nebula-swirl pattern, to his chest. He lets one naked leg dangle toward the floor.  
  
He could go. He should go. He can go to his mother’s house; he can travel in cat-form or stop by a bank in the morning. He doesn’t have any identification, but he can demonstrate the truth of his identity if asked; not like there’s more than one of him. He has some money, not a lot because he’s never had a steady job amid the string of parties and kept-kitten weeks, but some. He should leave Chris alone.  
  
He should let Chris live this life: this simple life of magic and healing, of open hands and open heart.   
  
Fire-heat spills over his face like tears, when he shuts his eyes.  
  
Chris comes in and instantly shoves two mugs of instant hot cocoa—topped with whipped cream?—onto the coffee table and demands, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”  
  
Sebastian freezes. Hand on the window-latch. “I…I’m…”  
  
“Sit.” Chris points meaningfully at the couch. “Down.”  
  
Sebastian comes back and sits down, mostly because he’s too tired to argue. Lead inside his bones, weighing down each step. Chris is giving him orders. Okay, he thinks. Let this be what happens. Payment for pastrami and a borrowed shirt.   
  
“Shit.” Chris sits down beside him. Holds out both hands: not a command. “I didn’t mean that. You scared me, is all. I’m sorry.”  
  
Sebastian looks at the hands. Looks at the apprehensive face. Tentatively sets fingers into Chris’s. Chris immediately starts trying to rub warmth into them. “I’m really sorry. You don’t have to listen to me, Jesus, I’m not gonna keep you here if you want to go. I just—you said you were feeling—and it’s pouring cats and dogs—shit, sorry again—out there and I don’t want you to get hurt. I just made hot chocolate, come on, the least you can do is drink one of them with me.”  
  
The hot chocolate wafts sugary steam upward, beckoning.  
  
“Well,” Sebastian says to it, letting Chris hold his hands, feeling icicles start to thaw under his skin, “I suppose that would be good manners…you did go to the trouble of making it…”  
  
“Right, and you don’t want to hurt its feelings.”  
  
“We couldn’t have that. Such tragedy.” Solid ground, perhaps. Uneven terrain, unfamiliar, but not giving way under his feet. “I don’t want you to get hurt either. That was why. I didn’t mean to scare you.”  
  
“Yeah, I kinda figured.” Chris releases one of his hands to grab a mug of hot chocolate. Hands it over, picks up the second one. “Feeling any better? Or not better, exactly, not from what you said, but y’know.”  
  
“Less like I’m going to have a spontaneous orgasm on your couch?”  
  
Chris narrowly avoids choking on a sip of cocoa. Coughs. Manages to look impressed while coughing.  
  
Sebastian grins. Regaining balance on that unfamiliar ground. And Chris _had_ called him a brat, earlier. “And yes. Better. Give me another five minutes or so and it’ll even out. What do you mean, you kind of figured? You don’t know me.”  
  
“You’re a good person. Hey, can I ask you something? Might be personal.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Oh, sorry…”  
  
“Of course you can. I’m in your house, wearing your clothes, drinking your hot chocolate—I do love whipped cream, thank you for that—and you can ask me anything. I don’t have to answer.”  
  
“Someday,” Chris says, “I’m gonna figure out what you think passes for a sense of humor—”  
  
“See if I ever cure your headaches again.” Someday? As in more days? As in Chris wanting to see him more?  
  
“No more chin-scratches for you. You seem like a whipped-cream sort of person. Why a kitten? I’d’ve guessed six months, maybe eight, but you’re…around my age? Maybe? Human you.”  
  
“You had to ask _that_ one.”  
  
“Should I not? You don’t have to tell me.” Chris makes a face at himself, drinks more cocoa, gets whipped cream in his beard. “I was just wondering.”  
  
“No, it’s fair. Honestly, though, I don’t have a good answer.” No one’s managed a proper long-term study of therianthropes of any species; too rare, too small a sample size. Academics have tried, but it’s fraught with difficulty. “At this point I think it’s stuck that way. When I was little I was an actual kitten, ball of fluff, wobbly legs, the whole deal…”  
  
“I bet you were _adorable_.”  
  
“I still am, thank you. And so—”  
  
“True,” Chris agrees. “You are.”  
  
“Thanks. So that form aged along with me for a while, and then it stopped. Sometimes that happens; you never know what your final shape’s going to be. My mother’s a full-grown cat, but she’s tiny. My father—my birth father, back in Romania; my stepdad’s human—is the fluffiest cat you’ve ever seen, long-haired and bulky all over, and obviously I’m not. _Mama_ thinks it has something to do with the way you feel mentally—childlike, mature, playful, fat and lazy, you get the idea—and that bleeds into the morphology, but that’s a guess.”  
  
“So, kitten.”  
  
“Potentially somewhat older after this. We’ll see if it’s true.”

“After this…” Chris takes a sip of hot chocolate, settles down and sprawls out next to him on the sofa, secure and steady against the lashing angry backdrop of the storm. ““Can I ask how you escaped? I know how hard compulsions and bindings are to break.”  
  
“Should I remind you what got me into the whole misadventure? He does like to party.”  
  
Chris gets it after a second. “Oh, right, and binding spells on actual magical creatures—not that you’re a creature, fuck, sorry—”  
  
“Don’t worry about it.”  
  
“—he’d’ve had to renew yours every, what, four weeks?”  
  
“Three, please,” Sebastian retorts, mildly affronted, “I was _trying_ to get away, you know. Anyway, so finally one of those nights of debauchery coincided with a night he should’ve remembered, and he didn’t, and this would also be why—”  
  
“—we’ve had flash flood warnings since around two pm today, after sunny skies.” Chris laughs. “Prone to temper tantrums, is he?”  
  
“Very. He’s not getting me back.”  
  
“No, of course not. You got out fair and square.” Chris gazes at him, curious, dismayed. “Were you thinking—even if you were still collared I’d’ve helped you. I wouldn’t let him take you back. Not to—not to that.”  
  
Sebastian, surprised, can’t think of words. “Oh,” he says finally, “thank you,” and looks down at his cocoa mug, ears going hot. He doesn’t have this problem when he’s a cat. He never used to have this problem when human and flirting with half a dozen witches at once. Chris Evans knocks him off-balance with straightforward earnest commitment.  
  
He adds, aiming for flip surface-level deflection, hiding newfound deeper emotion, “Don’t tell me I needed to learn a lesson, I deserved what I got, everything other people’ll say. I know.”  
  
“I won’t,” Chris says, calm with steel inside, “because you didn’t deserve it.”  
  
“…oh,” Sebastian says again, disarmed by sincerity. “Um. Thanks. Again.”  
  
“This house has good protection. It needs to, for some clients who come over. Even if he comes after you, we can keep you safe.”  
  
Sebastian, genuinely astounded by this offer, opens his mouth, closes it, discovers babbling words. “Chris, that…thank you, but you can’t…I know you’re fucking brilliant at wards and protections, I can feel—he won’t come after me. I’m almost sure. Like you said, I got out fairly; no magical contract or covenant, just the collar, and when he let it slip, that ended any obligation. He can’t make me come back. I’m resistant to compulsion without a collar anyway; that’s the only way that works on us. So I don’t think he’ll try.”  
  
“He’s angry enough to try to drown Los Angeles.”  
  
“He survived without me before, and he will again. He just tends to throw fits when things don’t go his way.”  
  
“Charming. Why’d you even—”  
  
“Me, bad decisions, alcohol, and handsome people, remember? He put a hand on my arm and told me I had beautiful eyes and got me to sit on his lap while he petted me everywhere and gave me sips of vodka out of his glass, and I turned into a puddle at his feet. I’d trust your defenses, especially with my support, but I really don’t think it’ll be a problem.”  
  
“With your support? You’d let me—” Chris shakes his head, smothers bafflement in cocoa. Fireglow paints his face, his eyelashes, in gold. “I don’t understand you.”  
  
“Moral compass of a cat in heat?” He knows he’s pushing Chris away. He tells himself he knows why: to uncomplicate life for those kind seafloor eyes. He doesn’t say that he’d get on his knees at Chris’s feet in a heartbeat. He doesn’t say that he knows Chris should be disgusted with him.  
  
“Stop pushing me away,” Chris says. “You’re not even good at it. You tell me why I shouldn’t want you, you tell me that like you think I’m going to kick you out, and then you turn around and cure my headache and compliment my warding skill and say you’d trust me to pull power from you, after what you’ve been through—you’d trust _me_. What I can’t figure out is why.”  
  
“You said I was a good person,” Sebastian says to the dancing fronds of fire, at home in their place. “I think you meant you.”  
  
Silence falls, not uncomfortably. Broken by snaps and crackles of flame, by showers of sparks, by the rhythmic tapping of omnipresent rain on windowpane glass.  
  
“Would it have worked,” Chris murmurs, almost to himself, “if I’d ever been the one to come up to you, and put a hand on your arm, and ask you, maybe, if you wanted to come home with me…?”  
  
Sebastian turns to look back at him. Heat spills from the hearth, tracing sofa-cushions and bare toes and the sides of faces. “Yes. I’d’ve been curious. You’re not like anyone else. If you’d asked, yes.”  
  
Chris takes a deep breath. “What if I’m asking now?”  
  
“Yes,” Sebastian says. “Yes.”  
  
“Not…I’m not going to ask you for sex. Or to give me any of your magic. Not when you’ve just…” Chris waves a hand, belatedly remembers he’s got a cocoa-mug in it, hastily puts the mug on the table. “But…I think you’re amazing and I want—I’m scared you’re going to decide again that you want to leave and I’ll never see you again and I don’t want to never see you again and I keep thinking about how much I want to kiss you—”  
  
“Chris,” Sebastian interjects, amused, heart positively glowing, some kind of emotion he doesn’t recognize that’s full of laughter and fondness and profound lightness of existence, “I said yes.” To prove the point, he whips off blankets, and stretches—Chris definitely appreciates this sight—and then slithers over and swings a leg over Chris’s hips and gets himself back into Chris’s lap.   
  
Not a kitten this time. And wearing only Chris’s soft long-sleeved shirt and cloud-grey underwear.  
  
“Hi,” he says again, nose to nose. “Just tell me what you want.”  
  
“No.” Chris reaches up, hand excruciatingly tender as it cups his face. “I don’t want you to do this because I asked. Because you think you owe me. I don’t want to tell you to do anything you don’t want to do.”  
  
Sebastian raises eyebrows. “I’m a _cat_ , Chris. I don’t see a collar anywhere in this room. So tell me, what makes you think I’m doing anyone I don’t want to do?”  
  
Chris stares at him for a second, and then is laughing, head thrown back, whole body shaking with merriment, hands clutching at him for support. “Oh, fuck…oh, man, I suppose I deserved that…god, you’re fucking _perfect_ , how’re you real…how’d I end up with you under my car…”  
  
“It was a very friendly-feeling car.” He rocks his hips. Feels Chris’s arousal; feels their bodies rub together even through jeans and underwear. “I like…your car.”  
  
“Friendly, huh?” Chris is still chuckling, but the heat’s back, smoldering in that gaze, in the intent, in the way his hands slide up under Sebastian’s borrowed shirt. “You still cold, or can I take this off?”  
  
“Keep me warm,” Sebastian says, lifting arms.   
  
“Oh, I can do that.” Chris trails fingers along his collarbone, over his chest. Chris is nearly fully clothed; Sebastian’s nearly naked. This contrast makes him whimper, makes him squirm on Chris’s lap. “Huh,” Chris says. “You like this? Me takin’ clothes off you?”  
  
“Yes…yes please… _oh_.” Chris’s fingers’ve found a nipple. Sebastian’s nipples are sensitive even when he’s not recently shifted shapes. Chris pinches lightly, testing; Sebastian moans, back arching. Chris grins more. Flexes fingers. A tiny flare of magic.  
  
“Fuck—” Sebastian’s entire body snaps into one taut bowstring of ecstasy. “What the _fuck_ , Chris—”  
  
“Magic hands,” Chris says smugly, holding them up; and Sebastian punches him weakly in the shoulder and demands, “More, come on, _everywhere_ ,” and ends up clinging to him, shuddering through wave after wave of bliss, centered in the glorious ache of both nipples being toyed with but washing through him head to toe.  
  
Chris holds him while he quivers, limp and wrung out and feeling like he’s just come ten times even though he hasn’t yet, what the actual _fuck_ , Chris is still playing with him, stroking his back and skimming a fingertip over the white-hot peak of his left nipple, and his cock’s rock-hard and leaking copiously through Chris’s underwear and he can’t even _think_ …  
  
“So pretty,” Chris says, “nice to pet…you like being petted, you said? You like being in my lap?” and runs a hand along his thigh, right up to but not touching his cock, and Sebastian wails, unsure whether to beg for those fingers wrapped around his shaft or for this coruscating torture to never end.  
  
“I like making you feel good,” Chris whispers, eyes unexpectedly serious, full of matching light but solemn as an oath when they meet and hold his. “I want you to feel good doing this, okay?”  
  
“That,” Sebastian manages dazedly, “won’t be a problem, I think I love your hands, wait, I’m supposed to be the magical one at sex here, what even,” and Chris starts laughing again. “Trust me, you are. Watching you, like this…Jesus. Wow.”  
  
“So you like watching,” Sebastian pants, getting revenge, and palms his cock with his own hand, stroking leisurely through Chris’s boxer-briefs, darker grey now from all the wet. “You want to watch me get myself off? In your lap, you said? In your borrowed underwear?”  
  
Chris lets out a noise that’s almost a growl, and flips him to his back on the couch. “Hands off. Mine. My hands on you.”  
  
“Yes _sir_.”  
  
“God, you are a brat, aren’t you? Are you trying to make me do something about it, kitten?” Chris bends down, looming over him. “You want me to spank you for that? Over my knee, with these hands, power in every hit? Electricity, maybe?”  
  
Sebastian’s mouth falls open. He might come on the spot, lying on his back with his arms above his head, with Chris Evans’ weight pinning him down, if Chris suggests one more thing.  
  
“Yeah, thought so.” Chris kisses him, then: deliciously soft and slow, taking charge but undemanding about it, firm and deep. Chris’s lips are warm, beard-scratchy, and they claim his with kindness. Chris tastes like hot chocolate. Sebastian moans into the kiss and tries to yield more, to open up further, yes yes _yes_ , fuck.  
  
Chris kisses his throat, right where he’d once worn a collar, not lingering but assertive. Sebastian closes his eyes, the shiver rippling down his spine: this is Chris, and he’s safe, and his throat will bear Chris’s mark for a little while now, the imprint of a mouth and desire. Because they’re choosing this, because it feels good.  
  
Chris pauses to pull off his own shirt, to unzip his jeans, though not more. Chris’s body’s artwork limned by flame: broad muscle and ribbons of tattoo-ink, magical symbols, personal shields, mementos. Sebastian wants to kiss him everywhere. To learn all his stories.  
  
To cover up the sudden inexplicable lump of emotion in his throat, he says, “Why the fuck did I never sleep with you before, look at you, I should’ve just jumped into your lap at that first coven meeting, why didn’t I.”  
  
“Because then we wouldn’t be here.” Chris kisses him once more, happy and swift. “You and me. Here and now.”  
  
“Here and now would be a whole lot better with your magic hands on my dick?” It comes out a question, albeit a sarcastic frustrated one.  
  
“Impatient little kitten,” Chris admonishes, “just wait,” and trails a finger along the inside of Sebastian’s elbow, along his forearm, and he’d never known _that_ could explode with light. His body’s liquid, molten, completely Chris’s to shape and mold and play in whatever key those hands desire. He forgets how to talk when Chris slips the finger into his mouth.  
  
Chris tugs his underwear down with the other hand. Sebastian’s body strains upward, yearning for the touch.   
  
Chris murmurs, “Ready?” Sebastian swears at him frantically in multiple languages, and ends up practically sobbing from denial as the hand hovers _without touching_.  
  
“Poor sweet kitten,” Chris tells him, “needing it so much, needing me…when you said you were feeling sensitive earlier, like an orgasm, you had no idea what I was thinking…maybe you do now, it looked a lot like this, the way you’d come apart for me if I touched you…”  
  
“Please,” Sebastian’s begging, “please, please, Chris, please…” and it’s not an act, it’s not a practiced seduction, it’s not his provocative teasing from before: it just is. Him and Chris.   
  
“I can help you,” Chris promises, “I just want to help, if you’ll let me, I want to help take care of you.”  
  
Sebastian cries, “Yes,” cries it over and over, trembling, flying apart at the seams; and Chris’s fingertips stroke the slick ready length of his cock, just once.   
  
The world collapses into rainbows. Fractured, bursting, refracted impossible colors. Iridescence along his spine, behind his eyes, flooding outward from his cock, orgasm infinite and billowing.  
  
He’s pure feeling now, endless oscillating bliss. But he _is_ magic, too. And Chris is a witch.  
  
The feeling, _everything_ he’s feeling, rushes outward. Overflows and pours down into the channel he’d provided it earlier. The channel between them.  
  
Amid stars, he vaguely sees Chris shove jeans down and pull out his own cock, thick and long, and jerk himself off: rapid desperate strokes, until he comes groaning over Sebastian’s shaking body.  
  
Chris wobbles in the aftermath, kneeling above him; Sebastian clumsily reaches up and tugs him down. Chris makes halfhearted protests about stickiness and heaviness and crushing him; Sebastian just says “Mmm, no…” and luxuriates in the weight atop his body.  
  
Chris lifts his head. Peers at Sebastian’s face. They’re both breathless. “You…fuck…that was…”  
  
“Seemed…only fair…”  
  
“I didn’t even mean to…I was gonna…get myself off in the shower later, this was for you…”  
  
“Martyr,” Sebastian announces, and pokes him in the ribs. “Didn’t I tell you…I was magical…at sex? I wanted to…what was your line…make you feel good. Shower. Yes. Good.”  
  
“Together?”  
  
“Fuck yes.”  
  
Chris washes his hair for him, which Sebastian’s not used to. He could use the assistance, though. Legs shaky. Magical. Very much magical. Oh yes.   
  
He leans back into Chris’s strength, surrounded by soap and water. Slides to his knees and grabs the soap and washes Chris’s legs: muscular thighs, tempting knees, the curves of those calves. Stops to loop an arm around Chris’s right leg, to press his lips to the spot above Chris’s knee. He’s not sure what he’s doing or why this feels right, but Chris’s hand comes down to rest on his hair, and that feels even more right, so he stays there for a minute, until the tile gets hard under his knees, and then he gets up, drowning his flushed face in hot water.  
  
After, as they’re lying naked in Chris’s navy-plaid sheets, in the bed surrounded by books and stray socks and scribbles of draft artwork and a blooming starflower vine for peaceful sleep lining the window, Sebastian comments drowsily, “I don’t think you have any clean pants.”  
  
Chris bumps his nose sleepily into Sebastian’s shoulder. “In the dryer.”  
  
“Oh, of course, that’s where normal people keep clothes…”  
  
“I like you wearing my clothes.”  
  
“I like neither of us wearing your clothes. Chris…”  
  
“Yeah?” Chris props himself up on an elbow, strokes hair out of Sebastian’s face. “What do you need, kitten? You okay?”  
  
To the night, to the quiet, to Chris’s kindness and the tempting contentment thrumming through his bones, he confesses, “I don’t know what I’m going to do now.”  
  
“You can stay here.” Chris knows exactly what he means. Of course. “As long as you want.” One protective arm cuddles him more closely. “About what you can do…I don’t know, what do you like to do? What did you like? Before?”  
  
“I…don’t know.” Parties, sex, moon-sugar, decadence, lack of consequences, the knowledge that his magic would always refill and he could somehow live forever in each moment. But this—  
  
He wants this. He’s too newly shy to say so, when he’s never been shy before. But he does want this: Chris, Chris’s beautiful messy compassionate artist’s house, Chris’s wonderful hands, Chris smiling and happy and saved from all headaches always.   
  
That’s the answer he didn’t have earlier, he knows.   
  
“I think…I like to read. I mean, I do like to read. Which nobody’d ever guess, probably, seeing me at those parties…”  
  
“That’s good,” Chris says encouragingly. “You want to borrow anything, go ahead.”  
  
“I used to like to write. When I was younger. Short stories…science fiction…romance…I started a novel once.”  
  
“Bet you were awesome at that too. Can I read one of your stories?”  
  
“They’re all at my mother’s house. She never throws anything away. I doubt they’re any good.”  
  
“I’d still read them.”  
  
“What, you think I should be a sorcerer’s assistant and write novels in my spare time?” He tips his head up for maximum impact of skepticism. “Or the other way around? Which would be kind of a waste of innate magical ability.”  
  
“I think it’s your magic.” Chris touches his cheek, his lips, under shadowy night. A caress. Sweetness. “I think you were born with it, and you get to decide how to live your life. I sound like a self-help book. Fuck. But it’s true, though.”  
  
Sebastian shuts his eyes, kisses Chris’s palm, opens his eyes. “I want to go home. I want to see my mother—she knows I’m okay, but I want to see her—and I want to drink every single thing on the Starbucks menu, and I want fresh blueberries. And…I don’t want to leave you.”  
  
He waits. Heart pounding. World teetering on the brink.  
  
“I think,” Chris says, words coming gradual and unguarded, like he’s working this out as he talks, like he’s imagining a future, laid out and humming with possibility, “you should go home. For a few days. A week. However long you need. But then…I’ll be here. I’m here. And I…I want you to come back. To—I know I shouldn’t ask you this, I don’t have the right, you just got out of—but I want you to stay. If you want. I want you to come back to stay. I want—I want to get to know you more. I want to see you smile. I want to take you to Starbucks and watch you drink everything on the menu. I’ll buy you blueberries every day. I want to try.”  
  
“Chris,” Sebastian says. “You remember when I said yes? Before?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Oh my god,” Chris says.  
  
“Also…if it’s you…yes again. About earlier, me being your power-source. You can…you can do more. Help more people. With me. And that’s worth doing. While I figure everything else out. Even after. So, yes.”  
  
“Are you sure? I mean—”  
  
“ _Yes_ , Chris.”  
  
“Sebastian?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“…it’s stopped raining.”  
  
“Yes,” Sebastian says, “yes, it has,” and rolls over into Chris’s arms, kissing Chris and being kissed, held securely by that strength, wrapped up in Chris’s sparkling magical protection and Chris’s sheets tangled around their legs; and he can see that future too, bright and shining, built bit by bit by them together.

**Author's Note:**

> And then they end up in love and together forever, and also Sebastian starts writing again, and they eventually create a line of children's books written by Seb and illustrated by Chris, infused with magic, so this book can genuinely help you feel better when you're having a bad day, and _that_ book can literally make you feel less alone, and _this_ book can let you briefly see and taste imagined other worlds to escape into...


End file.
